Hydro plans to invest NOK 180 million (US$16.6 million) in a state-of-the-art scrap sorting facility at the recycling plant in Wrexham, U.K. The plant will have the capacity to source and sort over 30,000 tonnes of aluminum scrap annually, enough aluminum for over 100,000 electric vehicles. The investment will also create 16 new local jobs.
“This new facility enables us to optimally sort a large variety of post-consumer scrap grades that are mainly exported out of the U.K. today, before continuing to the next step of the recycling process,” said said Barry Salisbury, Hydro’s plant manager in Wrexham. “This is an essential improvement in material flow that allows us to meet the increasing demand for low-carbon aluminum that we see particularly within the automotive, transport, and building and construction segments.”
The sorting facility will be located next to the extrusion billet recycling plant at Hydro Wrexham. By introducing Hydro’s state-of-the-art HySort technology, the facility will be able to increase sorting accuracy and capacity, as well as increasing the ability to recycle post-consumer aluminum scrap.
The use of post-consumer scrap significantly reduces the CO2 footprint of aluminum compared to so called pre-consumer (or process) scrap and primary aluminum. The investment in the sorting facility at Wrexham is one of several investments to reach Hydro’s overall ambition to step up growth investments in recycling towards 2030. The scrap will be sourced from local scrap suppliers in the region.
“In Hydro we are always looking for opportunities to reach our recycling ambitions,” said Ingrid Guddal, head of Recycling in Hydro Aluminium Metal. “Our recycling plant in Wrexham is already an essential producer of high-quality aluminum in the UK market. With the increasing interest from European customers to buy low-carbon aluminum, this sorting facility is a logical next step in optimizing our recycling processes by using a wider range of post-consumer aluminum scrap.”
Construction of the new sorting facility will commence in the autumn of 2024, and the plant is expected to be operational by January 2026.
Roadmap to Zero
By 2050, Hydro aims to become a climate-neutral company that produces climate-neutral products for a climate-neutral society. By investing in new technology and increasing recycling, the company aims to achieve its goal of reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions by 10% by 2025 and 30% by 2030, compared to 2018 levels.
Full decarbonization will be achieved by recycling more used aluminum in combination with the adoption of new technologies. This includes carbon capture and storage, the use of hydrogen and biogas as energy sources, and in addition, new, proprietary technology that has the potential to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from primary aluminum production.